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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26908672">The Torch</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi'>The_Last_Kenobi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Death, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Mildly Graphic Violence, Sith, Whump, Whumptober 2020, clone wars au, dark themes, on a not so ideal mission, this is the ideal team</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:00:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,490</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26908672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Last_Kenobi/pseuds/The_Last_Kenobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>General Kenobi, General Skywalker, Commander Cody, Commander Tano, and Captain Rex embark on a dangerous mission to penetrate the mysteries of a strange Separatist base guarded only by droids. They discover something that cannot be buried again.</p><p>Or; all things must end in their time, and the torch must be passed on.</p><p> </p><p>Written for Whumptober 2020<br/>Day 9 - "Run!"</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Anakin Skywalker &amp; Ahsoka Tano, CC-2224 | Cody &amp; CT-7567 | Rex, CC-2224 | Cody &amp; Obi-Wan Kenobi, CT-7567 | Rex &amp; Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi &amp; Anakin Skywalker &amp; Ahsoka Tano</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020 [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956463</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>114</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Torch</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p>Ahsoka had heard the term “passing down the torch” before.</p><p>It was an older saying, from some era back when actual, fiery torches were in common use throughout what was now the Core of the Galactic Republic.</p><p>It meant to hand off the task to the next person, to the new generation, to the survivors. Ahsoka had always considered it a boring bit of dusty poetry that occasionally cropped up in conversation or the novels Padmé liked to lend her.</p><p>Tears started to burn in her eyes as she thought about the last hour.</p><p>Not dusty poetry anymore.</p><p> </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>“<em>Drop down behind their defenses!</em>” General Kenobi’s voice cracked out over comms, his voice as steady as ever. “<em>We’ll take our team in alone while the rest handle the Separatist droids!</em>”</p><p>“What?” demanded Rex.</p><p>Anakin barked a laugh, standing next to Ahsoka and the Captain. “Yeah, sorry, friend. Last minute change of plans, Obi-Wan and I came up with it—”</p><p>“That,” said Rex, “is my least favorite sentence, ever.”</p><p>Cody sighed over the comms in complete agreement. Ahsoka stifled a giggle, looking down as the sideport of their airship, where the first assault on the enormous, dark-walled compound had already begun. Clones and droids clashed in a cloud of dust and blaster bolts.</p><p>“<em>Come now, men</em>,” Obi-Wan, unperturbed. “<em>You can see same as we can that something isn’t right about all this. All droids, no human commanders—they’re hiding something in there, and only a small team can manage to drop close enough to the entrance without being destroyed. And this team is the team I trust.</em>”</p><p>“<em>As if I would let you go on a fool's errand without me, sir</em>,” mumbled Cody.</p><p>Ahsoka did giggle at that, and Cody swore fluently in <em>Mando’a</em>, clearly not having meant to say that out loud.</p><p>Through the haze of battle, Ahsoka could just see the entrance to the other airship, and through it, could see a lightly-armored, ginger-haired figure patting a yellow-and-white armored figure warmly on the arm.</p><p>They all jumped from the air two minutes later, crashing down to the dust.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There was something very wrong.</p><p>Dark stone. Clean hallways. The distant hum of electrics—so much power, and yet no sign of it except the dull, flat white lighting that made Ahsoka’s eyes hurt.</p><p>“Easy, Snips,” Anakin said, reaching up to lay his hand warmly on her shoulder, one thumb stroking her chilled skin in a soothing manner. “We can do this together. We sense it, too.”</p><p>Sense what, Ahsoka thought, keeping the words from their bond so that he wouldn’t hear, the nothing? There’s this…absence, and that’s worse.</p><p>Master Obi-Wan seemed to sense her thoughts in some way, though; he turned his head from where he walked at the head of their little parade, lightsaber aloft, and gave her a reassuring smile, his lips curling into his beard.</p><p>Cody looked over his shoulder too, instinctively mirroring his General.</p><p>That was when everything went so wrong.</p><p>Anakin suddenly let out a shout of warning, stepping ever so slightly in front of Ahsoka—</p><p>Rex stepped next to him—</p><p>Obi-Wan turned back to face the room sharply, raising his saber protectively—</p><p>And Cody stepped in front of him, shouting, “<em>No—run!</em>”</p><p>Just before the scalding red lightsaber flew through the seemingly empty room and stabbed him through from chest to back.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Obi-Wan cried out. He stepped forward anyways to fill the opening that Cody left behind as he crumbled dead to the floor, the red saber torn from his body by the Force and returning to the hand of its owner.</p><p>A deathly figure emerged from thin air and gloom.</p><p>It was no natural being, and no enemy they had ever encountered before. Towering, swathed in black robes and a poisonous aura, humanoid and pale as bone with glaring molten-gold eyes. Whoever it was, it was Sith.</p><p>And Ahsoka had a terrible feeling that it wasn’t…alive. Not like <em>normal</em>.</p><p>The Sith had dug out something from the depths and now it was here, present and evil and—</p><p>It was coming for them.</p><p>It was death, but visible and screeching.</p><p>Obi-Wan stepped backwards, retreating from the room, his blue saber carving a wall of fluid light, protecting the other three from the deadly lashes of the dual red sabers the monster wielded and the blinding cracks of lightning that it was hurling at them. </p><p>He never wavered once.</p><p>Perfect blue lines shielded them as they pressed back.</p><p>They backed down the hallway, helpless to intervene, and Obi-Wan Kenobi turned his head one last time to look at them, a golden silhouette against infinite blue and swirling red and black, his eyes infinitely sad, and called, “<em>Rex—Anakin, Ahsoka—run!</em>”</p><p>And he very deliberately stepped directly into the cloud of death, absorbing it with his blade and his body, a living-dying-breathing-screaming human shield.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Anakin howled in anguish as his closest friend dissolved into pain and ash in front of his eyes, but somehow, some way, he held himself together enough to push Ahsoka fully behind him and drag Rex along, Anakin sandwiched between his two remaining partners as they stumbled backwards away from the oncoming evil.</p><p>Ahsoka let out a sob as she felt her bond to Obi-Wan splinter into fragments and fade.</p><p>Rex kept shouldering Anakin, forcing his General behind him, keeping himself closest to the entity.</p><p>Ahsoka knew why.</p><p>Anakin knew why.</p><p>He yelled, screamed, tried to jerk his Captain behind him with the Force, but the narrowness of the hall and Rex’s damned stubborn loyalty thwarted him again and again.</p><p>The malevolence burst with inhuman speed, a screaming maw with a frighteningly elongated open mouth and twin red lightsabers, eyes aflame, and Rex turned sideways, one arm shoving Anakin Skywalker firmly in the chest and knocking him backwards into Ahsoka, the other still firing blaster bolts into the face of the undead enemy.</p><p>“Sirs,” Rex shouted. “For <em>once</em>, do as you’re told. <em>Run!</em>”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Another bond ripped out of their heads.</p><p>A one-sided bond to a non-Force-sensitive, but what did that matter in the face of grief?</p><p>Ahsoka grabbed Anakin’s hand and hauled him along with her, slamming her hand on a control panel and bringing up blast doors between themselves and the spot where Rex was standing, upright and unyielding, as he continued to fire and a red lightsaber severed his head from his shoulders.</p><p>The doors wouldn’t hold the creature.</p><p>Master and Padawan fled.</p><p>Anakin pulled up short as they reached the entrance they had fought through a battalion of droids to get through not half an hour earlier, pulled his apprentice into a bone-crushing embrace, and slipped something into her empty hand.</p><p>It was his lightsaber.</p><p>“<em>Master</em>—” Ahsoka choked out.</p><p>Anakin was calm. He pulled away, resting her hands on his shoulders, smiling down at her ever so sadly, ever so proudly. “Take it, Snips. You may need it. And I…Obi-Wan trained me to carry a recording device into enemy holdings. There’s a chip in the hilt that will show the Council what happened here today. You have to go, you have to be safe—and you have to warn them. I need you to do this.”</p><p>Her eyes welled with helpless tears of futile rage and despair.</p><p>Anakin understood.</p><p>But the air was getting colder, getting darker. He pressed a kiss to his Padawan’s forehead and said, “I’m <em>so proud</em> of you. Tell Padmé…you know what to tell her. I know you don’t want to leave me, but Ahsoka…”</p><p>The Sith demon came howling up the hall like a living storm, all contorted limbs and unearthly screeching and flashes of lightning.</p><p>Anakin turned to face it, lifting both hands as if to push it back with the Force—</p><p>It halted, writhing and screaming, shooting lightning and coils of darkness, and the Jedi’s face began to grey rapidly, his eyes flashing between blue and molten gold.</p><p>He cast those changing eyes on her one last time, smiled, and told her: “<em>Run</em>.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Ahsoka took her Master’s lightsaber and both of her own.</p><p>She took the evidence of the nightmare.</p><p>She took the undying wail of pain inside of her, of all that had happened in the last hour, and channeled it into a Force-enhanced sprint that carried her directly into the confusingly normal battle occurring outside the compound, the dust and airships and droids and clones, none of them knowing what was coming, not knowing what had been lost.</p><p>The apprentice's hands curled around one of her own lightsabers, and around that of Anakin Skywalker's.</p><p>She raised the hand holding Anakin's and used it to flag down an airship - she would not fail. She would do as her Master had asked of her. She would leave him, because Anakin had told her to, because Rex had told them to, because Obi-Wan had told them to, because Cody had told them to.</p><p>Ahsoka carried the torch.</p><p>And she ran.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p>
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